EPA's Scott Pruitt: What Was So Great About Obama's Environmental Record?

Posted on: Friday, September 15, 2017By: GordonComments

Former President Barack Obama’s environmental record was mostly just hot air and built on his willingness to tackle climate change,
according to EPA Chief Scott Pruitt in a wide-ranging interview.

Obama is praised as the gold standard for environmentalism, even though he ignored several environmental disasters, Pruitt told The
Washington Examiner in an interview hashing out the Oklahoma Republican’s mission for the agency.

"Everyone looks at the Obama administration as being the environmental savior. Really? He was the environmental savior?" Pruitt asked
incredulously before rattling off a list of examples where Obama’s EPA stumbled on environmental matters.

"Well, he left us with more Superfund sites than when he came in," he said. "He had Gold King [the 2015 mine wastewater spill] and Flint,
Michigan [drinking water crisis]. He tried to regulate CO2 twice and flunked twice. Struck out. So what’s so great about that record?
I don’t know."

Pruitt was referring to toxic waste sites folded into the government’s Superfund program, which is intended to clean the most dangerous
and polluted places in the U.S. The agency has either been unable or unwilling to decontaminate many of the program’s 1,300 locations,
allowing pollution to fester.

Additionally, he referenced the Flint water crisis, which became a political flashpoint during Obama’s second term after reports surfaced
claiming the city’s drinking water was contaminated with lead. The EPA’s top official for the region resigned after news came out that
her office knew about the lead problem for months but ignored red flags.

Pruitt has been under constant criticism from environmentalists who believe his opposition to fighting climate change could render the
Earth uninhabitable within the next several decades. Also, he pushed back against many of his critics who are fixated on using hurricanes
Irma and Harvey as political weapons against the Trump administration’s climate policies. Both hurricanes slammed the southern portion
of the country less than a week apart and caused several billions of dollars in damage.

"The cause and effect of these storms, should that really be the priority right now?" Pruitt said during his Tuesday interview. "When
I’ve got Superfund sites to worry about, wastewater treatment facilities and we’ve got drinking water issues and access to fuel issues
and power outages. I just think it’s insensitive and it’s absolute misplaced priorities."